How to Finally Figure Out How Much Spending Money You Need Each Month

 Are you struggling to figure out how much spending money you actually need each month? Yeah. Sometimes we don’t even know what’s considered spending, let alone how much we should be spending, let alone how to figure out and actually spend the money.

There’s a lot. There’s. There’s a lot going on. Yeah. So we’re going to break it down. So you guys can budget with confidence and spend money, like with confidence . The lady with yeah, making it rain money. Yeah. So you can make it rain without feeling like, I hope the bills are going to get paid. So we’re going to break it down right now.

Here’s the deal. Managing your money.

You’re spending money, especially it can feel overwhelming. Yes. But it doesn’t have to be, because what we’re going to teach you is if you understand what counts as spending that some usually like part of the problem, like what is actually spending. And then you set the right budget and you set up our systems.

It’s easy peasy, lemon squeezy about spending y’all but spending tends to be what you say other than maybe that is your biggest problem. So that’s what we’re here today to really break it down. So you know exactly how much you are, how to figure out how much you can spend each month. Yeah, and it’s really just gaining control over your finances so that way you can make your money work for you.

Do you know how people know how much they can spend. After they’ve S. Spend all their money on bills. And then they’re like trying to see what’s left over. Now. They’re just looking at the account and they’d be like there’s money left. Obviously it needs to be spent or. Then they spend it all at the beginning of the month. It has nothing to spend on.

Like mortgage or they have their, a credit limit. That’s how they know. How much has been, that’s not correct. No. And we actually just spoke to a lady and she was saying, we asked her like, Hey she came on for a live coaching call. And so it’ll error here soon on our podcast, but we asked her like, Hey, have you separated your accounts yet?

Do you have your spending account set up? And she said, I can’t, I haven’t been able to do that yet. And our responses was you can’t afford not to. So the whole point of this is really trying to figure out how much money you need to spend in a month. And you have to make it happen. You have to make those transfers.

So that way you can spend with confidence. Yeah. You just want to know, you want to feel. The freedom to spend. That’s what we’re all about. And you have to have a plan so that you can feel that freedom. It’s not about feeling restricted. It’s not about I can’t, or I don’t have, or whatever it’s about.

This is I know exactly how much I’m going to spend. I know exactly how much I have to spend on every single thing that I might want to spend money on. That’s what we’re going to, we’re going to we’re going to tell you today. So the first real thing to solve. Yeah. It’s to understand what spending is.

So like we only have five categories. Other people’s budgets are very convoluted. Not as easy to understand. They’re very confusing. Yeah. We have five categories and this is how you, this is really going to help you.. Our categories, income bills, debt, spending savings really help you to know what spending is because spending is not a bill or debt payment.

That’s not spending. Hello. And it’s not something that you’re saving for. If you’re saving for something in the future, that’s not spending, that’s actually saving. And I know it sounds silly and I don’t mean to be patronizing, but we have the other budgets. Don’t put it in this context.

They just put everything in one line though. One boxer, whatever. And it’s all but what do I do with my hands? Everything. That’s not a bill or a debt or saving is spending. And so when, when you’re looking at your budget and you’re going okay, and we like to say, the spending section of your budget is where you’re living.

That’s where all the spending. Is happening . So what are some things that go underneath that gas, groceries, pocket money, right? These are, this is money for you, money that you spend on your kids, restaurants, all of these things. These are, this is all stuff that you’re going to spend money on in the month.

It’s not a bill, right? Shanna said, gas money, not a bell that is actually you’re going in person, or you’re swiping your debit card. You’re paying for it. So therefore you are spending money on it that month. And this is the point. Other people will put this in the same budget as your bills.

Like when you’re doing the budget, that’s why we changed our budget to mirror. What you do with your hands, when it comes to your money, what are you actually doing? Your bills and debts are over there being automatically paid, you’re saving your money and your savings buckets spending is what I know.

Vanessa said every month. This is the thing I’m doing. I’m actually. Doing these things with my money every month, I am not automatically like the bills. I am physically going to go to the store, get, or make the grocery order or whatever. And so that’s why anything that you’re spinning that’s that is what is going to be in this column.

Gas groceries, family fund. And one way to think about it. Vanessa is if I’m at a swipe or if I’m going to pay cash. Definitely. I know that’s going to be spending. But really just knowing it’s not a bill and it’s not savings. Absolutely. You really want to look at what do you spend money on each month?

You have the same things that you’re spending money on each month? Like . Gas, groceries, pocket money, kids, restaurants, family, fun, entertainment, haircuts.

Those are pretty regular, maybe you have date nights twice a month. You need a babysitter, you need cash for that. Those are all the things that are pretty consistent in a budget. They never usually change. So you want to just have those in there all the time. And even if they do change, let’s say You talk about the amounts.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even if like you need, you’re going to have a party and you need more food, like you would just change the grocery number. You’re just always going to have groceries. And so that’s why it’s very nice to have this setup. Like I know every month and then of course we teach the paycheck plan,

so every pay day I’m getting money for gas. I’m getting money for groceries. I’m getting money for restaurants and that’s where it’s all happening. Spending is usually your problem, right? Or it’s usually Or at least you feel like it is by figuring by actually categorizing and giving yourself budgets and permission and labels for all the ways that you spend money. It’s going to become crystal clear, what’s going on and it’s gonna become crystal clear where your money’s going. But, by setting this up, you’re allowing for it to happen, but you may be, we’ll be able to put a specific parameter on it so that you’re not overspending. And this is why we budgeting categories.

People think I had one person come to me with their budget and they had already purchased our budget system. So I was using already what they listed and it was all wrong, was fine. We just redid it. But they had subscriptions over listed in the spending category and they had a bunch of other quote unquote bills in the spinning and they said this is just fun stuff.

I’m like, I understand that it’s fun stuff that you want, and it’s not a need, but our budget is not done by wants and needs. Shana said it is done by your habits. What are you doing with your hands? And so a subscription is a bill. You are getting built for it. They send you a notification saying. Charged. And so that is a bill.

So you don’t want to put that over there. And on the flip side, when Shannon was talking about. All of your categories, you do not have to list out. Every grocery trip. Oh no. Every time you’re going to spend money, like your pocket money, every kid expense. No we’re saying this is what we’re going to spend in this category.

And so we had a lady who also wanted an expense tracker and we’re like, that sounds like death. I don’t want to do that. And neither actually, neither do you. I promise. But what we want you to do is just look at it in categories. How much do you spend in gas as a whole? How much do you spend in food as a whole. And this is important to personalize it.

So we said like restaurants, family, find entertainment. Like that’s, those are all usually the same. What people have, one of those, they don’t have all of it. And it’s important to categorize according to how you’re spending money. One of my families. That has family fund in their budget.

They have young kids. So when they’re going to do something as a family, they’re just all going to do it. That’s how it works. But once you have older kids, You buy one, a budget for them separately. I have another couple of days budget per kid there. The kid’s name is in the budget for spending each month and that’s how they do it.

And so you want to personalize it according to how you live with your life. And that’s, what’s going to make you be able to do it. I even have similar some of my single folk. They actually would rather have just one spending account, which is their gas groceries, and they call it food because they’re half the time be maybe buying groceries.

But most of the time they’re eating on the go, which is fine. It’s just easier for them because it’s just one person and it’s not usually that high of an amount, so they can bundle, bundle that all together. But the more people you have living in your home, the more convoluted it can get. So staggering it out, like Shayna said, having a kids account or each kid that’s perfect. I have a client who she’s got four teenagers and everyone gets their certain amount of money, every single paycheck.

And it works perfectly. Yup. So the other. So the, so I think it is important to go back to what you said. You’re always going to have this categories every month. Groceries, gas, personal money. Or, pocket many kids and they may fluctuate the amount, but those categories are always going to be there.

The only other thing that might make the spending a little wonky is what happens. This month, like this month, maybe it’s something different is happening. However, if you’re doing it right, a lot of those things will fall into other categories. That’s why we have a kids’ bucket because you might be tempted to put birthday party on there.

But maybe the kids is actually funding that, or there might be a savings bucket if you’re getting really sophisticated for gifts. And then you don’t have to actually budget spending that particular month. However, there may be some stuff, some things that do happen that you’re not saving money.

You’re just like, I need 50 bucks for this month. I’m going to put it in my budget and then we’re going to pay for it. And I’m going to spend it and that’s how that would work. And maybe this is the first time that you are budgeting, so you haven’t. Saved up yet for vacations, maybe you haven’t saved up yet.

Like I said, for birthday parties or Christmas and things like that. So you really do need to put those in the budget per month until that passes and then you can start putting it in the budget because that’s one of the things we like to say. Like we understand people love the savings bucket idea, but sometimes you really can’t start off that way.

You can write some sort of funding them all at the same time. So we do one at a time. So one of my clients. She was really mad. She wanted me to do all her annual bills cause they had a lot. And I said, we can’t do that. You can’t afford it. But every time she paid for one in full, like every time one came up that was due. Then after we paid it in full, then we added it to the annual bills bucket.

And so it just kept getting bigger and bigger over time. And so for example, the one that I thought of recently that we had was I contributed 50 bucks for fireworks because w the place that we go, everybody bundles money, I’m not going to save up for that. I don’t even know if I’ll go next year.

But this budget, I’m going to put it in my spending this month that I want to plan to contribute that for the fireworks. And so the spending is just what’s happening this month. The savings is if I’m trying to save up for the future. So it’s really important. I think we’ve, I think we figured he hit it.

I think we did. We may have over spoke it. Okay. The problem is how you’re like, that sounds perfect. Exactly. Correct. But how well we’ll tell you how the first thing is, like we said, just figure out what at what budget amount makes sense for which categories. Made sense for you that we listed, what budget amount makes sense for you monthly? That’s the first thing to do.

So then what you want to decide is it going to be a cash envelope or is there going to be digital envelope? So you have the choice to say, is this something that I want to deal with digitally and have a debit card for, or put it in a debit card category?

Or do I want to have a cash envelope and pay cash for it? If you decide that you want cash, there’s a different thing that you’re going to do. Then if you’re going to use it. Debit card, the debit card, you do have to set up an account for it, right? So if it’s restaurants and you want a debit card, get that.

If it’s gas and groceries, you need that. If you want, like I do to separate your gas and your groceries. I don’t have two debit cards, but I do have two accounts. Then you would have different accounts for whatever you want to spend money on, but you don’t want to use cash. That’s important. The main thing is to set up the accounts according to your budget, right?

Absolutely. And you can name them. Remember the best part. Remember. You can call them like family fun or whatever. Oh. And we have we had one lady named her bills account. My name is no right. Your name. She kissed. So that way you knew not to pull money from there, but just make it fun. I have a 1, 1, 1 of my clients right now, she has super fun names for all of her accounts. So yes.

So the first thing is, look at your budget, set an amount of money for each category. Then decide, am I going to pay for this in cash? Or am I going to pay for it digitally using a debit card? The next thing you want to do is then set up the accounts like Shannon said. So if you’re going to do it digitally, then you need to have a couple separate checking accounts.

Y’all this is the 21st century. We are not 16 anymore. You can have multiple checking accounts. This is fantastic. I’m going to tell you. I love it. It’s so easy. Okay. It’s just so much more organized when you will look at your bank account and Hey, this account says gas. This is how much is in it.

This account says groceries, and this is the money that I have in it. And so on and so forth, it really holds you accountable to the amount of money that you said you were going to spend for that thing. Okay. So then once you have all that done, the next thing is your paycheck plan. So you’ve budgeted monthly for how much it is and you’re going to choose whether you, your paycheck plan is, do I get paid?

Do I want to go off of weekly, monthly? Biweekly. However, I want to get my spending money. That’s the paycheck plan. So then if it’s, let’s say you want to get paid biweekly, you’re going to go. Put you’re going to divide that big number into and on payday. You’re going to transfer that money to the different accounts and our budget system. Does it for you, but you can do it manually in your head. You can do the math, but yeah. So let’s say, you have a thousand dollars for groceries and you want. A thousand dollar monthly budget for groceries every pay day, then you will transfer 500 right to your groceries account, and then you’ll have it ready to go get groceries.

Then the next thing, after you figured out how much money you’re going to have you have your accounts, you figured out what your paycheck plan is going to be here. Then you set up the auto transfers, which is fabulous.

Shana said, it’s going to go off of the paycheck dates. So there’s a bunch of different ways you can do this. Shanna said weekly, biweekly twice a month, which is the first and the 15th. Or just monthly, right? So what you’re gonna do is figure out how you want to do this transfer. You’re going to go into your bank app or on your computer. You go to the transfer screen and you’re going to set up this amount to go automatically into those accounts. And then Bella, it’s done all done.

It’s totally hands off from this point. Yeah. And then you just have to go spend money, which is the whole point. How do I spend my. This is what we’re all really good at. Let’s say you’re at Chick-fil-A. Okay. How do I spend this? How do I spend money even? What do I do? What do I do? If you don’t already know how much is in your out to eat or restaurant fund,. Pull up your bank app and you see exactly the amount of money that’s in there. And you tell your kids, we have 20 bucks is all we’re spending. I’m just kidding. You need more money than that. Like one person. You have had one person get up. But really the idea here is to find out the amount of money that you have in that category.

And then you can spend your money. It’s just, it’s really easy. It’s in the moment. Like you can make the decisions in the moment. I love it. So for instance, Oh, I was going to talk about savings buckets. That’s not what this is about. Yeah. So think about gas, like gas, however, yeah. You transfer years, right? Yeah, but you would still spend, you still spend it, I’m saying how you spend your money.

So I think we just didn’t put that part, like the actual, what you’re doing with your hands at the end. Yeah. So another example is like gas, right? As I said, I don’t have a separate card, but I have a separate account. What’s really guys what’s really great is I can get gas whenever I want.

I don’t, I’m no longer the person that has to ride on E because I’m not sure how much money is in my bills account or how much money I have coming in next week or whatever. Can I afford, do I get to eat or have gas? That’s not happening. I have money all the time for gas and it’s great. And you know what else I can fill up?

Remember when you were in high school and you’re like I hope this $2 gets to meet. The rest of the week. I could just fill up. I could fill the whole thing up, but let’s be real. She and I run on eight, but it’s not because they don’t have the money. It’s just because we don’t have time to go to gas station yet to go to the gas station. I still have time. The amount of time I spent in my car is high.

The amount of time I have in my life is like, yeah, my son is mom. The thing has said E for a minute. I’m like I know, but I think it’s still gonna get me to the house. This is a small ramp, but two points there, one there butts we’ll be able to go get us gas soon enough. It won’t be long. And to I re I know now my grandparents used to make a thing on the weekend.

They would go get gas. I’m not even getting outing. It was an outing and I’m like, I don’t want to be a grandparent. They would go get their gas so that they wouldn’t have this problem that we’re having. But anyway. What if you’re going out to dinner with your husband, how do you spend money?

What do you do then? You, okay. So if it’s cash, you look in your envelope, you know exactly how much money you have for your date night. , if you have a digital envelope for that, then you pull up your bank account and you look and see exactly how much money you have for that.

And you guys spend your money. Yeah. What if your daughter wants to go skating? Same concept. You said, if you can have a conversation with them. So whether they have their own envelope or they, you have an account for them, you can be like, look, you can go skating, but there’s no more skating this month.

This will be the last activity based on your budget that we have. So that’s just how you do the spending. Yeah. And that’s, I just want to put a point in there, bring the kids in on the conversation. If you’ve set. A certain amount of money aside for your kids to spend tell them about it and let them budget how they’re going to spend that money, which I think is really important. It takes guys that takes the pressure off of you. Yeah. And just, it takes the pressure off of you and it empowers them to be able to become smart young, financial li literate. People. Which is great. That’s ultimately what we want. Yeah, cause they’re going to be the one paying for us to all go on family vacation.

Cause UTI. So well, And they’re the next generation. So don’t we want like smart. Financially literate people. That are paying for us to go on vacation. That’s all I’m saying is. Hi. Okay. I think that you guys know about spinning. Now. I feel like we really, we did, but the thing is we told you spending is everything.

That’s not a bill or not saving for something that is what’s been confusing you is because people lump it all in together and it’s not. And then we told you the categories. Yeah. That we consider that you might want to consider putting in your budget. Yeah. Some of the most common ones that we have with our clients are gas, groceries, pocket, money, kids, money, restaurants, family fund entertainment, and people swap back and forth between those three. And then we have haircuts and babysitter money.

And then again, those are the pretty much reoccurring ones. And then you have your unique ones that are happening specifically. That month, like Shannon said, last month was 4th of July. And she had some money set aside that she’s not going to be saving for that and a savings Becca. So she literally going to put it in the month, that month it’s spend it.

And so then we told you, what do you do with your hands to make this work for you? You figure out which categories you spend money on. you figure out a monthly budget. You decide if you’re gonna use cash or go digital, you set up your accounts, then you set up your paycheck, a plan set up those auto transfers.

And then every time that you needed some money it’s already there and then swipe. swipe. cash or pay cash either. Oh, by the way, we’re still here for cash. Cash is a good, this is good. You’re going to get a lot of discounts these days, if you do cash. So it’s not bad. It’s not about no, it’s not.

It’s really good. And it holds you super accountable. I’ll have a good one. We’ll see you next time.